Patrick Dungan is pictured with his wife, Laurie, and their 2-year-old son Jonas. (Press-Register/Victor Calhoun)

MOBILE, Alabama -- When Patrick Dungan finished law school at the University of South Carolina in 2011 he was married with a baby and owed more than $166,000 in student loan debts.

“I kept telling myself ‘it will all be worth it, you can pay it off,'” said the 30-year-old Dungan, a practicing attorney in Fairhope who is still paying off student loans. “I never thought it would be that much.”

Dungan is among thousands of recent college graduates in the U.S. who are grappling with the realities of life after college -- overwhelming student debt and a weak economy that makes it difficult to find high-paying jobs. Overall, student loan debt has surpassed the $1 trillion mark nationally, and student loan debt exceeds credit card debt in U.S. households. A heated battle is under way between Republicans ad Democrats over student loan interest rates.

For Dungan and his wife, the couple lives “from paycheck-to-paycheck.” He pays $430 a month on his student loan, which is only one-fourth of the total debt. The couple is also paying about $200 monthly on his wife’s loan, which was around $20,000.

Dungan said he has multiple outstanding loans covering the $166,000, including federal and private.

“I was a little older, already married and living on two salaries when I decided to go to law school,” said Dungan.

He said they couldn’t survive off his wife’s salary alone, so he got a job waiting tables part time while attending law school.

In February 2012, he found a job as an attorney, but still struggles to pay off his student debt.

“Really, the only way we could live comfortably with this debt is if my income was somewhere around $120,000, which seems impossible to me now with the current status of the legal job market,” said Dungan.

Roughly 93 percent, or $111 billion, of the student loans projected to be made for the 2011-12 academic year are federal student loans, according to the Consumer Bankers Association.

Less than 7 percent -- approximately $7 billion to $8 billion -- of the total is private student loans, the association reported.

“Those federal loans are made without regard to creditworthiness,” said Wade Peterson, vice president of Wells Fargo Education Finance. “Almost anyone can get one.”

Education loans come in three major categories: student loans, Stafford and Perkins loans; parent loans, or PLUS loans; and private student loans, also called alternative student loans, according to FinAid.com, a website that provides information on financial aid.

Peterson said that up until 2010, banks were making federal loans as well as private loans. But a couple of years ago, lenders “were taken out of the picture and the Department of Education started making all federal loans.”

“With regard to private loans we offer, we believe private loans are a vital part of the future student loan market,” said Peterson.

“They offer a choice and option to shop competitively and based on circumstances.”

Peterson said that student loan debt is a “fairly serious” problem in the U.S.

Now, there’s a heated battle between Republicans and Democrats over whether to raise the rate back to 6.8.

“Based on the family’s income level, some lower- and middle-income students currently pay 3.4 percent for federal student loans, while students from families with higher incomes pay 6.8 percent,” said University of South Alabama spokesman Keith Ayers.

“The pending change would move all undergraduate federal Stafford loans to the 6.8 percent rate, which would increase the total payback cost for families who previously benefited from the interest rate reduction subsidized by the government.”

If Congress doesn’t act by July 1, the interest rates on student loans will double to 6.8 percent for more than 7 million undergraduates, records show.

“We all recognize that a dramatic increase in interest rates on new student loans would be devastating to millions of young Americans just entering the work force,” said U.S. Rep. Jo Bonner, R-Mobile.

Bonner said that on April 27, the House passed the Interest Rate Reduction Act to prevent interest rates on new federally subsidized Stafford Loans from increasing next month.

He said that under the House bill, the nearly $6 billion in costs associated with the one-year extension of the student loan rate would come from unused money in the Prevention and Public Health Fund.

“Unfortunately, President Obama has threatened to veto our student loan rate extension because he would rather score political points than solve this pressing problem,” said Bonner.

The White House maintains that “Senate Republicans still have not proven that they’re serious about resolving this problem.”

“For the second time this month (May), they voted to ask millions of students to pay an average of $1,000 each rather than close a loophole that allows the very wealthy to avoid paying their fair share,” according to a statement last week from the White House press secretary’s office. “Now is not the time to re-fight old political battles, and certainly not the time to cut preventive health care measures.”

Ayers said the important message to students and parents “is that federal student loans remain readily available for students who desire to attend college but don’t have the resources.”

“The best advice we can offer is for students and parents to research the loan options available to them during school and the payback options available after graduation to make the very best decision for their personal circumstance,” said the USA spokesman.

Matt Mathis, who works for an insurance company, has been out of college a decade, and says he “can’t even make a dent into paying” his loan debt.

“It was way too easy to get the student loan and as an 18-year-old I had no idea the amount of stress these loans would cause me,” said Mathis, who is 33.

He graduated from the University of Alabama in 2004 and is still paying on the loan, which now amounts to $22,434.

Even when Mathis went to take out a loan to buy a house and a car, he said his student loan debt was an issue.